I don't understand why there would be such an assumption. If anything they should load it up with pure +dmg, as all specs can use it, then let the gems add crit, should one desire it.

I'm not sure what other warlock's experiances are here, but the only time I've cast a fire spell in the last 4 months is when I've been mind-controlled in Shadow Labyrinth or Tempest Keep, or Searing Pain on the Curator's adds. Whilst it's nice for a Shadow Bolt to crit once in a while, that's not where my damage comes from. As such, and having looked at the Tier 5 stats and set bonuses, I immediately dropped alchemy on last week and am now wearing full Shadoweave in order to optimise my damage. Whilst you can understand blizzard wanting to make proper use of the professions in a raid environment, as Tier sets are only 5 pieces now it's a lot easier to make decisions regarding set bonuses than it was in Naxxrammas. And even then, it's generally the 2 piece bonuses that are most applealing to warlocks.

You should still be casting immolate Z Factor

Yup. And spec bane rather than demonic aegis while he's at it, if he wants to talk about DPS.

If warlocks (and mages) had true sets for each tree, then we would be sitting at +2000 shadow damage in T6 (and non set equivalent) with no crit, and some hit.
Hunters, rogues, warriors and all the other melee dps classes wouldn't be able to keep up with our damage, not to mention tanks would have to generate a lot more threat.
Plus we would go back to two-shotting everyone in PvP with our +500 shadow on use trinkets.

If we were to take our T6 and switch all the spell crit into +damage, we would be getting marginal returns since when you stack a stat (in this case +dmg), the more you have, the less you can stack at higher values.
Bad wording, but let's assume an item with:

+60 shadow damage
+10 spell crit rating

Switch stats on this item whilst maintaining ilevel and you can get both these:
+65 shadow damage

or

+60 shadow damage
+10 fire damage

Even as an affliction lock, I'd rather have 10 spell crit than 5 damage. Note my numbers are completely made up.

It's all itemization.
That's why it's hard to make a pure affliction (for instance) set.

To reply on that, this being a shadowpriest issue aswell.

All imaginary numbers.

If we take your 60 damage and 10 crit, and then turn that into 65 damage, that would be quite an upgrade if 1+dmg would offer your dps 10times the returns you would get from 1 crit.

Items dont need to be balanced, because certain stats are "worth" more to certain classes then their respective itempoints value would say, and other stats are worth much less then their itempoints.

You mean this particular set of numbers? or the previous?

Because as an affliction lock, there's no contest there: 5 damage is worth more, period.


I'm frustrated by the shadow priests wanting +shadow damage and filling this thread with it, because I think it causes spazzes by the melee (and for good reason.)

Like it or not, the itemization budget is balanced assuming generic +dmg -- the tailored sets threw this out the window and created a huge dps imbalance (which all casters are now paying for, as melee damage is getting tweaked up.)

If all pieces were school-specific as a rule, that'd pretty much only benefit shadow priests, since they're the only caster (ignoring ele shm/moonkin for a moment, since we don't have itemization benefiting them anyways) who would never ever be switching schools. It'd create a need for far more pieces, which would mean casters gearing up slower than melee due to limited drops.


Yes you'd prefer shadow. I'd prefer shadow too, in general, and so I pick pieces like that. But I believe the game is far *healthier* when balanced around generic damage, with some flavor pieces sprinkled in.

The tailored pieces created an expectation that Blizzard won't be following up on unless they change how budgeting is done on pieces (making +shadow as expensive as +dmg.)


Preferring shadow is a far cry from the situation with crit where it's useless (not just "not preferred", but useless) for the bulk of our damage and of your damage.

There's additional issues for warlocks of spell haste being as useless for us as +crit (at least it affects mindflay for shadow priests.)

And I guess I should be grateful that I need +hit for shadowbolt and soulshatter, since otherwise it would also be of very marginal use.

1) You can pull aggro with your gear
2) You specced demonic aegis instead of bane
This does not logically lead to
3) Demonic aegis is better for raiding than bane
So stop claiming it does, please. If you're threat limited without bane, then true, spec doesn't matter at all. If he isn't threat limited, speccing bane instead of demonic aegis will allow him to put out more damage.

That would be very silly - each point of +dmg costs more the more you have on the item, so be stacking the whole budget into one stat you'd be severely gimping the gear.

I thought that only applied to base stats like stamina, agility, and so on. Does it also apply to spell damage/spell hit/etc?

It applies to everything.

This is why classes/stats should be designed so they all can benefit from a variety of stats. One, it creates more equal gear footing (since the few that can only bulk up on one stat don't get penalized), and two, it allows for more tradeoffs, decisions, and customizations.

Pigeon-holing a class into 1-2 stats is a design error IMO (which is why I think it's good that they're adjusting the value of +crit for paladins, although I'm not sure that they're doing it correctly -- some corresponding buff might be appropriate, I don't know. Either way the point stands, especially with how itemization works.)

I dont understand why they create items with just one spell dmg school. It's just imbalanced . Imagine hunters running about with ranged attack power in items, could easily get 3k RAP unbuffed. :<

Well, if you perfectly build every item, then we'd all be equally overpowered. Then, it would be up to the devs to just balance the classes correctly instead of fixxing class balance problems with gimping itemization. And of course balancing encounters to match.



The only thing I don't understand about things is why they haven't already properly itemized all the Tiers. I mean, there's currently a huge issue where higher tier upgrades aren't actually upgrades. Simply buffing the new stuff with better itemization so that it would be desireable seems to be an easy and obvious solution.


Also, every class could concievably benefit from specialized gear for their specs. Even rogues, presumably the most inflexible of the classes would benefit from it. Mutilate would go with the traditional crit and AP, combat would go with hit% and haste rating, and sublety would prefer stacked agility.

One often overlooked downside is that perfect itemization is boring. Just take a look at rare quality cloak quest rewards spread throughout the expansion, is it terribly exciting to get a cloak that has 2 agility more but 1 crit rating less than your old cloak? Not really. Is it exciting to go from a cloak that has some odd mix of strength, agility and spirit to a cloak with a nice amount of stamina, attack power and crit rating? You bet.

Having only perfect carrots will just mean your carrot on a stick won't work.

Aye, unfortunately it's a trip that only really works once. Once you've achieved perfect itemisation, you have to stick with it for all subsequent gear, otherwise you won't get any actual upgrade for many ilvl's worth of "progression".

The way round that is to periodically change the game mechanics so itemisation that used to be optimal is now no longer optimal. Then you can re-climb the optimisation tree at the same time you climb the ilvl tree, and get some noticeable upgrades out of it.

But look at the uproar that happens when the mechanics change - see the Illumination change. If they changed warlocks to get more benefit from crit, or mages to get more benefit from spirit, you'd have the same woes in a different skin. And that's because any mechanics change will inherently be a nerfbat moment, since the optimised itemisation is tuned for the old mechanics and not the new.

You prefer looting a badly itemized cloak first, so when you upgrade to a well itemized cloak it feels better? I'm sorry, but I don't agree with you here. Most likely you'd not wear the str/agi/spirit cloak in the first place because it was surpassed by a well itemized cloak with a lower ilvl.

I agree that having perfect itemization can be boring, but honestly - having poorly designed items is not the counter to it. Interesting procs, set bonuses and new effects (haste, ignore armor etc) can help with the +2 stats from previous tier syndrome.

The solution is simple, nerf all damage over time spells and allow them to crit.

I was actually thinking about this. Not about nerfing them, but allowing them to take advantage of crit rating somehow. Would help alot in making the raid gear more appealing to locks.

Everyone has been, the idea has been posted 100 times on these threads.

I wish I had faith it'd have any play at Blizzard though.